Jews and Guns

by Chuck Morse

Contributing Columnist, Sierra Times

Posted: 07/31/00

A typical example of a Liberal-Left, American Jewish attitude toward Second Amendment rights was expressed by Rabbi Samuel Chiel of Newton, Mass., in an editorial in Boston’s Jewish Advocate (8/99) entitled "Looking for a Few Good Resorts". Front Sight, near Las Vegas, is the resort for gun enthusiasts described in the column. Rabbi Chiel sarcastically assumes a posture of incredulity and dismay upon the discovery, by him, that many people who expressed interest in purchasing a townhouse at the resort belonged to an organization called "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership". He was shocked to discover that "Apparently, there are those (and Jews, yet) who think that guns mean safety." I owe Rabbi Chiel a debt of gratitude for introducing me, and hopefully others, through his viciously negative article, to this excellent group. It’s quite heartening to know that there is at least one American Jewish group that understands the concept of freedom.

Chiel is indignant that one of the visitors to the resort, David Nathanson, stated "Look, none of these guys here will ever shoot this kind of gun. What we share is a belief that an armed society is a safe society." Chiel’s response is "All of these years I have thought that a safe society is one where people are concerned for each other and willing to work together to make their community a better place for all who live there". Chiel’s beliefs are contrary to both Jewish and American tradition, notions of natural law, and common sense.

In another column on an unrelated subject, Chiel makes the amazing assertion that the Talmud "abolished" the death penalty! The left certainly loves to invent concepts to suite their agenda.

Our American history proves that a society where "people are concerned for each other" is one where individual sovereign rights are considered sacrosanct and are not to be infringed. Only when freedoms are secured can people "work together" in a voluntary context for areas that constitute self interest. In Chiel’s twisted view, man achieves some sort of utopia only when he surrenders his freedom to the state or to a group of benevolent, enlightened, experts who would somehow qualify to act for us less enlightened.

There are too many self appointed liberal Jewish (and non-Jewish) leaders like Chiel who, usually pontificating from their plush suburban parlors like those found in Chiel’s upscale hometown of Newton, want to foist their bizarre and dangerous schemes on the rest of us living in the real world. This is particularly unseemly for a Jewish leader in these times given the events surrounding the National Socialist, Nazi Holocaust against a disarmed Jewish population.

In the 1920’s, Weimar Germany instituted gun registration and restrictions in the name of public safety. This policy was largely ignored by Nazi and Communist gangs acting in the same way as criminal gangs who ignore "gun control" act here. Innocent citizens saw their gun rights increasingly restricted and their safety imperiled by the state. In the 1930’s, Hitler outlawed ownership of guns by Jews who were stripped of most of their other civil rights as well.

If the Jews of Europe maintained possession of guns there would not have likely been a Holocaust, at least not to the extent it occurred. Shalom Yoran, author of "The Defiant" describes how he and some fellow Jews fled to the forests during the Nazi occupation of Poland where they were able to attack and kill Nazi’s guerilla style and free people on the way to the camps. The two things Yoran and his heroic fellows couldn’t get enough of were food and guns. The story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was a story of Jews with guns.

Aaron Zelman, director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) points out that every Holocaust this century, starting with Armenia and up to Ruanda, occurred after the population targeted for extinction was disarmed. Yet today’s "liberal" Jews like Chiel and groups like the Anti Defamation League(ADL), shun commentary concerning the philosophy of disarmament and it’s antecedents in Nazism. We must not forget the Communist/Socialist experiments and their disarmed populations. According to the newly released "Black Book of Communism", the Soviets liquidated upwards of 30 million of their own population, the Red Chinese up to 60 million. Guns could only be found in the hands of the state, acting to "create a better place for all" to quote Chiel.

Chiel shows all of his cards at the end of his editorial when he states "I, for one, would rather spend my winters in a place where the community works to eliminate all guns except those belonging to the police". This statement tells us everything we need to know concerning the philosophy of the "gun control lobby" and their ultimate goal.